When Vladek Spiegelman took his son Arthur aside one day to teach him about the Holocaust, it was more than a history lesson; it was a survival lesson. He drew diagrams of the shelter in which he had hidden his family -- not pictures, but simple, urgent drawings that mapped out, in the father's mind,

Anxiety, Avant comic art, Dark, Dramatic, Egalitarian, Expansive

While it may seem like a contradiction to speak of chaos and precision in the same sentence, the work of Jackson Pollock demands it. At the same time that his paintings depict disorder, frenetic abandon, and a turbulence of nearly cosmic proportions, they demonstrate perfect balance. The manner in wh

Abstract expressionism, Expansive, Formless, Loose, Playful, Post-war literature, Repetition, Rhythmic

Although she is one of the twentieth-century artists who made Modernism unmistakably American, Georgia O'Keeffe channeled the European influences of Rodin, Matisse, and Picasso into an extremely personal vision of landscape. Encouraged by Arthur Wesley Dow's fusion of Japanese art, Art Nouveau's app

American modern, American regional painting, Biomorphic, Demure, Elegant, Erotic, Ethereal, Expansive, Feminine, Minimal

Diane Arbus is called the "Wizard of Odds" because her photographic subjects have included circus freaks, nudists, mentally retarded adults, eccentrics, homeless people, orgiasts, and outcasts. Her work has been dubbed "grotesque," "hateful," and "in bad taste." Norman Mailer stated the prevailing se

Confessional poetry, Dense, Documentary photography, Expansive, Grotesque, In-your-face, Intimate, Moody, Pathos, Perverse, Sublime